Coming Soon Quentin Tarantino is doing another western (The Hateful Eight) with Christoph Waltz. Sad face. Was hoping he'd try new genres with new stars. Film DoctorHer and the intimacy machineThe Guardian a questionnaire for A:OC's Abigail Breslin. Turns out that Little Miss Sunshine herself is a crazy cat lady. Yay!

Carpetbagger Suzanne Vega is the latest musician to come out with having issues about the portrayal of the music scene in Inside Llewyn DavisMNPP another fan of Scarlett Johansson's sensational work in Don Jon -- I tell you people... it's so embarrassing that this performance didn't get any Oscar traction!Just Jared check out Evan Rachel Wood's singing pipes. Wowza. There's another actress to cast in movie musicals

Predictable Sequel News of the MomentCinema BlendTerminator Genesis which is already on two strikes (first you don't reboot a series based on time travel which already allows do-overs without pretending originals didn't happen / second they already practiced exceptionally uninteresting casting by getting TV girl badass to play movie girl badass) is now looking for the male lead. I hated the latest Die Hard but Jai Courtney is super nice to look at so can I root for him?/Film Avatar Land begins construction in Florida. James Cameron is helping design it because, you know, anything to slow down his filmmaking. I am only interested in going to a land like this if they really amp up virtual technology and you get to be actually inside the body of a huge blue alien with great abs and have hot virtual sex with hair braids

I feel like you could charge a lot of money for that. The park plans an opening to coincide with the Avatar sequels in 2016/2017... or if I know James Cameron, 2019/2020.

Unpredictable Sequel News of the MomentDid you hear they're making a sequel to The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel? The whole cast (except Tom Wilkinson *sniffle*) will return and Richard Gere and David Strathairn will join them.

Reader Comments (10)

Scar-Jo's lack of traction for DON JON is criminal. I'd hoped she'd be bumped up to lead actress comedy/musical at the Globes and stand a chance, but that category is so deliciously full, I understand her missing out. I wonder if there was ever going to be much of a chance for a campaign, or if the September launch for HER stole spotlight.

"'s so embarrassing that this performance didn't get any Oscar traction!"

Ugh, why? I thought she did a really good job but i feel like the appeal lies more in the novelty of seeing a white Hollywood bombshell play a semi trashy Jersey girl and ScarJo playing against type than in anything particularly phenomenal in her performance. You could have a darker-skinned actress in that role and people wouldn't blink twice.

@caroline--Huh? What on earth does her race have to do with her performance? That seems like a serious false dichotomy to me. Is the performance more impressive because we know that Scarlett Johansson isn't a Jersey girl? Maybe--though I think that's debatable--but I think it's safe to say the people praising the performance would feel the same way if it were Kerry Washington for example giving the exact same performance.

Personally, what's impressive about it isn't that Scarlett Johansson is playing someone far from herself, but that she's creating such a full inner and outer life for the character. Barbara Sugarman never feels like a caricature the way every other character in the film, including Joseph Gordon Levitt as Jon, does. The performance might not have impressed you, but I don't think it's fair to assume that everyone who appreciated her in the film would dismiss a black actress in the same role. That seems both self-defeating and judgmental.

Barbara Sugarman is definitely a character based in The Sopranos ladies/Michelle Pfeiffer in Married to the Mob/Marisa Tomei as Mona Lisa type of woman. Yes, there is a racial and class component to her. Also given how sensitive, or not really, JGL's portrayals were of the working-class Italian Catholics, saying Barbara as a WOC of color would be no problem, do you really want that movie actually tempting fate casting a WOC for the role of the girlfriend who gets dumped? ScarJo totally nailed that part in a movie I thought was mostly intolerable. Why the ranting on that performance?

Also, since ScarJo grew up in New York since she was a kid, I would say she had a much better idea of who that person was and people were in the movie than Joseph Gordon-Levitt ever did. Not to play 'sick burn!' but I am certain that is the truth.

What I find interesting about Caroline's comment is that "jersey girl" type that ScarJo is imitating are from ancestry based. I mean, their fore-bearers didn't travel from Italy looking and talking like that. That took elements from other cultures, and exaggerated elements of their own culture into the image we have of the "jersey shore type" today. And furthermore, there's the appropriation of this culture then by white people (the tanning and assuming of a particular dress) that plays into Johansson's performance.

What Scarlett did is perhaps even more impressive given that she's white (albeit with Russian, jewish, and Bronx roots) given how much of a caricature that persona has become in pop culture and yet she was still able to create a fully-formed character. I can still see Barbara existing outside of the walls of DON JON and that's the sign of a great performance. The mentioning of Marisa Tomei was good.

I remember reading how Quentin Tarantino liked movies where horses and dogs were the heroes. He found those moving and tragic. So I think in his new western there should be a lot more focus on the horses as characters. I loved Django's horse, and the stories of how the horse got better at hitting its marks as the film went on.

So then Tarantino needs to hire Viggo Mortensen for his new western. Viggo is an actor who really bonds with his horses. He bought his horses from LOTR and Hidalgo because they got along so well. And for a romantic interest for Viggo, may I suggest Emma Thompson?

I said it! Jennifer Lawrence would snatch that GG right away with that mediocre performance. Especially average compared to Lupita's performance in 12Years a Slave. The It girl reigns. If you think that AH as a movie was amazing we may have lost our taste in great film. The Fighter superb. Russell after then has been incredibly overrated, he's got some connections. Lets be honest the only worthy winner for American Hustle was Amy Adams.